As is known today, more and more companies that rely on computing technology are adopting the approach of owning nearly no physical computing assets themselves, but rather have turned to the information technology (IT) computing model known as “cloud computing.” For example, as per the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST Special Publication No. 800-145), cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
In this environment, many cloud services have been proposed including, but not limited to, Computing-as-a-Service (CaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SasS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). As such IT offerings become more standardized and commoditized, the cloud trend is only going to accelerate such that IT administrators (individuals or groups that manage, or at least assist with, IT assets and issues for an entity such as an enterprise or business) will have many choices of cloud service providers (SP) that offer the same cloud service. Choosing the correct SP will be a challenge for the IT administrator.